Trailer for the documentary American Jihadist, which screened at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival.

American Jihadist is a look at militant Islam through the eyes of an African- American who fought and almost died for it. This is the story of Isa Abdullah Ali, aka Clevin Raphael Holt, an African- American Muslim from the ghettos of Washington, DC, labeled a “known terrorist” by the U.S. Defense Department though he’s never been charged with any crime. Ali fought for six years in Lebanon and Bosnia and was shot multiple times for, as he puts it, “the pleasure of God by taking a stand to help the ill treated and oppressed.” What makes a person willing to pick up a gun for their religion? Are the underlying causes purely religious? Or might religious militancy be a means of addressing chronic social, economic and political issues? And what do the answers mean for the wider Islamic World? These questions underlie American Jihadist.